Picking up The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir from a shelf was an easy decision. In addition to the subject and the author, the cover is wonderful. From the use of proofreaders’ marks to a refreshing and uncluttered back cover blurb, it embodies the themes of book. But one might ask, is it fair to start a book review by judging its cover? No, but also yes.
The making of a book involves many unknown or lesser-known steps, which start from editing the content of a “soon-to-be-a-book” to its gatefolds: authors, editors, designers, printers, publishers, spending months, sometimes years, to “make a book” and we rarely get to learn about the process. Editors, especially great editors who have mastered the craft of lending their skills to someone else’s work, remain invisible, and accounts of editor-author relationships remain an equally unexplored category.
Published by Juggernaut Books, Ramachandra Guha’s The Cooking of Books offers a rare insight into this world – the relationship between an author and their editor, supplemented by friendship, memories, and disagreements and ignited by exceptional scholarship. Though categorised as a literary memoir, The Cooking of Books goes beyond reminiscing and offers a comprehensive exploration of how these dialogues are not only a part of the publishing history and culture but also the “intellectual and social history of” one’s time. Based on Ramachandra Guha and Rukun Advani’s personal correspondence, the narrative reflects on a world of words, shapes our understanding of academic publishing in India, and urges us to look at the collaborative efforts in publishing which are rarely celebrated.
From ‘what we remember’ to ‘how we remember’
Outside the published accounts of famous authors and their relationship with their editors [especially when it extends beyond a couple of books], recording and preserving correspondence essentially serves a much larger purpose. To answer a question about the nature of our engagement with contemporary record-keeping practices, the debates about accessibility and how it could impact historical research, the author says,
“I think the disappearance of the letter as a physical artefact and its replacement by communication through electronic means (emails, WhatsApp, etc) has dealt a body blow to the creation and maintenance of archives of correspondence. This will affect much larger areas of research and writing than that constituted by my own highly idiosyncratic personal memoir. I think for example of the challenges that future biographers shall face. I have written two biographies; of Verrier Elwin, who died in 1964, and of Mahatma Gandhi, who died in 1948. In each case, there was a substantial physical archive of letters and other documents written by, to, and about the lives of these two people. That made my task infinitely easier than if this record did not exist. How would a biographer of a writer or politician who is now alive and active approach her work? How would they retrieve or gain access to emails and WhatsApp messages? Would posts on X and Twitter count as a credible primary source?”
— As told to the author by Ramachandra Guha.
While The Cooking of Books reminds us about other long-standing relationships between a specific author and their editor, such as Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb in America or Shashi Tharoor and David Davidar in India, Ramachandra Guha’s relationship with Rukun Advani remains distinctive: even for its own time and possibly because of the nature of the correspondence where personal meetings and phone calls played a much smaller part.
If a section is bad, the editor needs to put it out of its misery
The chapters outlining the formative years of Ramachandra Guha’s writing and research are also a remarkable account of an author and an editor working together through conversations, disagreements, and fellowship. Although editorial comments, research and writing occupy a central position, these recollections do not feel restrictive but feel like a masterclass for its readers who discover the nuanced world of editing and publishing, learn from the numerous examples and excerpts of editorial notes, which intervenes but innovates, introduces, and explores, and in this case, also illustrate the history of a new era in scholarly publishing in India.
Both the author and his editor scrutinise the cultural impact of academic research and what it means to publish such works, how they respond to its relationship to nation-building – The Cooking of Books reveals and reflects on the exceptional contribution of Rukun Advani’s scholarship in academic publishing in India. Within the broader context of global, national, and regional research, list-building, and editorial scholarship the book further explores the ongoing social and political transformations at that time and the chain of events that left an extraordinary editor and scholar forced to choose between building something and compromising. As narrated in this book, both publishing practices and policies of Oxford University Press were complicit in this, decisions and guidelines were enforced and changed – guided not by scholarship but by colonial prejudice and corporate agendas.
Another aspect of academic publishing and a question about the way scholarly works are written, edited, and produced, the author provides valuable insights in terms of the language and reminds us how different disciplines need to communicate differently:
“I am not closely in contact with academic publishing any more, so can’t directly answer your question. However, in terms of the language they can and should use historians are different from economists, philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, etc. In those scholarly disciplines, to communicate the results of one’s research one is often obliged to use technical language. If an economist or physicist wants to reach a wider audience than that constituted by their professional colleagues, then they have to radically simplify or shall we say ‘dumb down’ their language. On the other hand, the historian can communicate the depth and richness of her research findings as well as the subtlety of her analysis in everyday language. This is also true of the discipline of anthropology, which like history deals with the lives, beliefs, and struggles of human beings in flesh and blood, not with depersonalized abstractions like prices and wages or light and sound. Historians and anthropologists therefore have no need of jargon, yet they resort to it, merely to impress their academic colleagues by appearing elevated and profound.”
— As told to the author by Ramachandra Guha.
‘A joy and an education’
The chapters, “Exiting the OUP” and “Writer and Critic” follow Rukun Advani’s departure from OUP and the beginning of Permanent Black. As the author remembers Rukun Advani’s assurance about one of his lectures, “The lecture will go down well, it’s nicely anecdotal and conversational”, the reader will feel similar emotions reading these chapters.
The detailed comments are not only a lesson in editorial scholarship but also an extensive account of literary bilingualism in India and Rukun Advani’s thoughts on the “linguidextrous” history of intellectual traditions and what it means to be a scholar, a writer or a historian which indeed is a joy and an education for the readers. In addition to lending his support for the translation of academic research: “While the market for translation of fiction has expanded and perhaps even thrived, that for scholarly works is relatively modest and needs to be vigorously expanded…” the author calls our attention to some important aspects of marketing in academic publishing:
“There are three distinct kinds of books by historians, which we may characterize as the ‘scholarly monograph’, the ‘cross-over book’, and the ‘trade book’. If I were to use these terms to describe my own work, then my first book, The Unquiet Woods, was a book written principally for scholars and researchers, my biography of Verrier Elwin a cross-over work written for scholars/ researchers as well as for the literary-minded general reader, and India After Gandhi written for anyone at all. For the last kind of book, a trade press like Penguin, HarperCollins or Macmillan is obviously the most suitable; they know how to reach the widest possible audience. However, if a ‘trade book’ by a historian does not sell very well in its first year it is often pulped. For the first two kinds of books, university presses are best suited, as they both know how to reach an academic audience and how to keep a book alive for a long period of time. This is where the decline and virtual disappearance of the Indian Branch of Oxford University Press has been such a major loss to Indian publishing. The OUP had offices and warehouses in all the major cities and hence could keep both scholarly monographs and cross-over books in print for decades at a stretch. Take classics of Indian social science like Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy (first published in 1983) or MN Srinivas’s The Remembered Village (first published in 1976). They had the enduring influence they deserved because the OUP kept them in print for decades. Had Penguin or HarperCollins published these books they would have been unavailable five years after first publication.”
— As told to the author by Ramachandra Guha.
The final chapters are different: the warmth and tenderness of a long-standing friendship is carefully weaved into the prose. Without intrusion we learn a little bit more about Rukun Advani, about his life and his work, but just enough. We learn about the kind intensity such friendships provide, enveloped in mutual support and respect: we observe the mountains, the dogs, and the quiet vigour, while in the background we learn about the sad and unfortunate state of libraries and archives, namely, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, where Guha has worked since the 1980s. To answer a question regarding the current state of archives and libraries and the need for more research in this field, the author feels,
“There is certainly a general lack of awareness of these institutions and how and why they have declined. Realistically, it is hard to imagine that Government run archives such as the NMML or the National Archives can effectively recapture their past glory. That is why archives such as those run by Jadavpur University, Ashoka University, and the National Centre for Biological Research in Bengaluru need all the support they can.
And yes, I would welcome more histories of scholarly institutions in India, whether of academic archives, influential/important colleges, universities and research centres, or even scholarly journals. Personally, I would be very pleased if a young and energetic scholar would research and write a history of the Economic and Political Weekly and its predecessor the Economic Weekly. The EW and EPW played a profoundly important role in shaping the intellectual life of independent India.”
— As told to the author by Ramachandra Guha.
What sets The Cooking of Books apart from other literary memoirs, is the abundant and diverse account of social and cultural moments wrapped in a sharp, witty, deeply enriching prose. It inspires, urges the reader to look beyond the best-selling covers, celebrated authors, glamorous book tours towards a lesser-known world of editorial intervention. In an ecosystem which prioritises “efficient editing” and increased “publishing profitability”: The Cooking of Books focuses on the vital role of editorial scholarship which champions the making of a book.
Suchismita Ghosh is an editor from Kolkata. A translator herself, she is interested in book history, editing translations and writing about print culture. She is currently studying Digital Humanities at KU Leuven.
The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir, Ramachandra Guha, Juggernaut Books.